In Which I Decide to Always Wear Matching Socks in the Future, Just in Case I Visit a Mosque for Eid Again

Today, for the first time, I visited a mosque and experienced an Eid al-Adha celebration. The Muslim Student Association took a van to the mosque in Somerset, so we left at 7:30 and drove about an hour to join the cheerful community celebrating Eid, which involved a service and a potluck and merriment that was sort of like Christmas. I was excited and pleased and amazed and thoughtful all at once because this event held a lot of meaning for me after the studying and searching I've been doing.

Of course, a new adventure could not come and go without a little Cassie-Goes-to-Kaniv moment. If you don't know what Cassie-Goes-to-Kaniv means, or have somehow forgotten (I fail to believe that anyone who knew and ribbed me about it for weeks has forgotten) I advise you read the May 12th 2009 post of this blog.

But back to the present. It all started over the weekend when I innocently did the laundry. The dorm laundry room is equipped with three washers and three dryers that are usually more or less functioning. We share. Sometimes stuff gets moved or "disappears." Sometimes there is malevolent intent, but mostly I think that the dryers, like every other dryer I have encountered thus far in my existence, have a taste for socks.

This one apparently prefers striped fleece ones, because somehow, one sock from each of my two favorite pairs of Ukrainian fleece socks vanished this weekend. I was very sad, especially because the Kentucky weather has taken a bitter turn of late. My boots will be lonely without them.

I rose at 6:00 this morning to a cold, wet world and crept to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Brittany was still asleep and it was dark as Hades.

Now I was well aware that I was visiting a mosque today, and after all, I have been to Afghanistan. I knew there were certain things you shouldn't wear in the setting I would be in, but I still tried a little research online to see if there was anything I should consider as far as dressing in a way that wouldn't offend. So I put on what I had picked out, a pretty normal outfit from my generally conservative wardrobe, slightly modified with a headscarf. So far, so good.

By 6:50 I had dressed, had breakfast, and made a cup of tea for the road. I was about ready to meet the others at Alumni Circle. But it looked so cold outside, and there were my boots. I looked down at the sorely un-matching socks I had left in a sad little huddle by my nightstand. Both of them were striped, but one was blue, white and gray, while the other was all dark brown, blue, and black. I looked back at my boots. I looked back at the socks. I needed to leave, and I needed to be warm, and oh-what-the-heck-who's-going-to-see-my-socks-anyway? No one would ever know.

I pulled on the fleecy goodness and my black boots, grabbed my tea, and headed out into the drizzly cold. No one was waiting outside the Alumni Building and it was 6:59, so I went inside to our alternate meeting place, the little prayer room inside the building. The other students greeted me, and I went into the prayer room with Ayuna, the other girl in our group. It was only when she started taking off her boots at the door that the realization hit me: my little secret was about to be exposed, not just to my four classmates, but to the whole Somerset Muslim community within the hour.

The guys said their prayers and Ayuna and I sat quietly on the benches. I tucked my blue striped foot behind my brown striped foot and prayed silently too.

In the end, socks don't matter so much. We got to Somerset I don't think anyone really noticed; or if they did, they graciously didn't comment. I felt like I was welcomed into a family. The smells of delicious slightly unknown food, the reverent whisper of sock feet on perfectly vacuumed carpet, the rythmic prayers in Arabic and the thoughts about Abraham's unswervingly obedient faith, the little kids kneeling with their parents, the almost-kisses the women gave me and each other on both cheeks, all combined to give me a sense of awe and wonder.

We were sleepy on the ride home. The rain slid down the fogged windows like tears and clouds hung mysteriously in the hills along 75. Somebody turned on the radio and it was hip-hop, and then it got turned off again. I thought a lot about what devotion means and how holy God is. I thought about the paradoxes in my life and the way my socks don't match. I thought about what it's like to wrestle for answers till you're worn out, and what it's like to be so in love with God Incarnate that He's the only answer you end up wanting after all.